Actor vs. Playwright

I notice an odd phenomenon sometimes when I'm at the theatre, or at a rehearsal. An actor, in a contemporary play, will say something no person would ever say; or perhaps say words in a way that no person would ever say them. The speech onstage becomes unnatural.

- I should take a moment and emphasize that this post was not inspired by any of the acting in any of the Onion Man shows... everyone I've seen is doing great. -

This is commonplace in modern Shakespeare acting. The actor who can speak Shakespeare naturally and conversationally is rare. But it happens in modern plays as well.

I think it comes from distrust, either in the playwright, or in the actor himself. A line doesn't make sense on first reading, and the actor makes one of three assumptions: 1) The playwright wrote a bad line, 2) The playwright made a mistake, or 3) The actor isn't smart enough to grasp the language, so he's going to have to fake it. I don't buy any of them.

1. Most published plays have been through several staged readings, and a first rehearsal process and production. Hundreds of opinions, on moments big and small, have been thrown at the playwright. The playwright has thought through all these opinions and altered the script as she has seen fit. So much thought went into the words of that line, there's a 99.99% chance that they say exactly what the playwright wants to say.

2. Typos happen, but they're fairly obvious. The character Brian's name didn't suddenly become "Brain," though if "Brain" is written, you might want to explore the possibility that it's a nickname before you assume it's a typo. If an actor thinks there's a typo, she should explore every avenue that the words are the playwright's intent before finally concluding otherwise.

3. At some point, every actor was given their role by a director or casting director of some sort. Dumb actors don't get cast as smart characters. And most actors are actually pretty smart, despite what the techies say. The language of a play may have a level of poetry or nuance to it that makes it difficult to grasp; but it should still be spoken as though the characters do naturally speak that way.

One thing that throws actors is inconsistency between playwrights in style. Some playwrights will include "wrylies" all over the place, telling actors that the line should be read according to some adverb. Therefore some actors don't explore sarcasm as a possibility in lines that don't say "sarcastically." Some playwrights will cut off an interrupted line with (...), some with (--), and some make sure to include "interrupting" on the following line.

The solution to this confusion is looking elsewhere in the play for similar usage. Readers of my plays should find that I consistently use (--) to mean the line is interrupted, and (...) to indicate that the line trails off. They'd also find that I rarely include acting directions in the text. Shouted or overemphasized words might be in all caps; or I might include a "[to Brian]" where leaving it out would be confusing.

Here's a quick example:
The line "Despite what you've heard, I am not a thief" doesn't tell you what word gets the emphasis. Or does it? Why would the character say "I am not" when he's clearly not above using contractions in the first clause? That tells me that "not" should be emphasized.

Yes, I could write the line "Despite what you've heard, I am NOT a thief," but doing that with every line will irritate the actor and the director.

So my advice to the actor struggling with making a line make sense: trust that the playwright knows what they're doing and did it on purpose. Trust that you can unlock the reason. There may be some illumination of character hiding behind it.